6.2 Machine Language
As we pointed out in Chapter 1, the only programming instructions that a computer actually carries out are those written using machine language, the instructions built into the hardware of a particular computer. When computers were first created, humans had no choice except to write programs in machine language because other programming languages had not yet been invented.
So how are computer instructions represented? Recall that every processor type has its own set of specific machine instructions. These are the only instructions the processor can actually carry out. Because a finite number of instructions exist, the processor designers simply list the instructions and assign them a binary code that is used to represent ...
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